FAQ for Current Graduate Students

The questions below have been posed by graduate students at various
stages of their careers. They seem to fall into two categories:
technical, and those which ask what happens if I (and to what extent
can and how do I) do things which are perceived to be beyond the
written policies of the department.

The remarks below represent an interpretation of current policies
by the Graduate Program Committee, but just as our own court system
constantly refines its interpretation of laws, the interpretations
below can and no doubt will change with time.

Let the questions begin

The most important question: Who or what is the
definitive source for answers about policies affecting your status in
the graduate program?

If you have any question about whether an action or inaction on
your part will have repercussions for your graduate career, the
Graduate Program Committee (GPC) is the definitive source for answers.
The GPC formulates policy, which is considered, modified, and then
approved by the department, and the GPC then carries out that policy.

The GPC controls your stipend, grants (or
not) extensions to deadlines, sets the terms for you to regain good
standing should you fall out.

The members (and chair) of the GPC changes from year to year, but
membership is listed in the committee
assignments list which can be found on the department website via
the Department
Documents page.

Registering for Classes: What is the department
policy on signing up for independent studies, taking classes outside
the department, dropping or adding a class late? What does it mean to
sign up for thesis research versus graduate research versus a reading
course versus independent research versus supervised teaching, etc.? What
classes count towards the 15-course requirement for a master's degree? What
should you do if you haven't taken enough "real" classes?

As stated in numerous published sources (e.g.,
the ORC), students must take at least 15 courses of
graduate quality to qualify for a masters degree with a limit of at
most five replaced by approved research or special study.
Additionally, they must register for (and successfully complete) three
courses per term in order to be considered a full-time student (and
hence receive a stipend). Course descriptions can be
found here. A tip to understanding the numbering system in
math is that courses numbered above 20 are generally categorized by
their last digit: Courses ending in

0 correspond to probability and statistics

1 correspond to algebra

2 correspond to geometry

3 correspond to analysis

4 correspond to topology

5 correspond to number theory

6 correspond to applied mathematics

7 (generally unused)

8 correspond to combinatorics

9 correspond to logic and set theory

In preparation for written certification exam, students are
expected to have taken courses which cover three of the five core
areas: in algebra (101, 111); in analysis (103, 113); in applied
mathematics (106, 116; 126, 136); in topology (104, 114) as well as three or
more topics courses of choice.

N.B. As a fourth course, every student in their first two years
needs to register for one offering of Math 107 (supervised tutoring)
in the second term that they tutor that year.

Topics courses can be another classroom graduate course, or can be
a supervised reading course (127) in which the student pursues a topic
to advance their progress toward oral certification in two areas of
mathematics. In the first three terms, students are required to take
two classroom courses per term even if they have been exempted (by the
advisor to graduate students) from some of the standard courses listed
above.

Also note that courses 127, 137 are typically taken (almost
exclusively) prior to advancement to candidacy. In the summer after
advancement to candidacy, students register for both 147 and 148
(which constitutes the teaching seminar), and 137 or 156 (independent
reading or graduate research as appropriate). For subsequent terms
(remembering that you are required to talke 3 classroom courses per),
the default is 156, 157, 158 with perhaps 158 replaced by a 149 in the
term in which the student teaches (or does their fifth-year teaching
experience).

It would be quite unusual to take courses outside the department in
the first two years unless their content clearly advances the student
towards passing a qual in a non-core areas. After advancement to
candidacy, the student's thesis advisor should concur that such a
course advances the student's research program.

Students should endeavor to register for courses when requested by
the Registrar. Adding courses late (and dropping courses) cause
numerous problems for the department. The graduate program is small
and graduate course enrollments are correspondingly small. The Dean's
office reviews the (official) enrollments of all courses in the first
week of each term, and those with an enrollment of less than five are
subject to immediate cancellation. Cancellation of a course means the
student will no doubt have to learn this material on their own,
perhaps find a viable alternative course to replace the canceled
course, and certainly creates problems for the faculty member who was
scheduled to teach that course.

Opting out/auditing of required courses: What do you do if you don't
want to take one of the core courses on which the written
certification exam is based (because you've already seen the
material)? Can I audit a class?

The courses whose content is covered by the written certification exam
are 101, 103, 104, 106, 111, 113, 114, 116, 126, and 136. Students
who have seen and indeed mastered material in core courses can attempt
to be exempted from some of these courses by taking a topics-based
written certification exam as part of graduate orientation.
Auditing graduate courses is not encouraged since reduced enrollments
on the Registrar's records both endangers the existence of the course,
and generally diminishes the appearance of activity in the program,
something the Deans actively monitor. Instead, the (advanced) student is
encouraged to discuss the details of course requirements (attendance,
homework, exams, etc) with the instructor by/at the inception of the
course.

Grades in Classes: How do grades in graduate
classes work? What does it actually mean if you get a low pass? Do
graduate students have classes on days that undergrads get off?

Requirements for a class are entirely the purview of the instructor,
so there may well be all manner of requirements including attendance,
homework, exams, required x-hours, and so on. There may be a
distinction between the requirements for undergraduates and graduate
students enrolled in the same course. There may be times graduate
students have extra responsibilities; there may be time that students
who have passed a qual in a given area or advanced to candidacy will
have fewer requirements. All these variations are entirely normal.

Grades come in two flavors and have distinct consequences. There
are the formal grades turned into the Registrar HP, P, LP, NC. A P
(pass) is a standard grade; many instructors rarely use HP (high pass)
as there is no notion of a GPA for graduate courses, and it is your
certification process and thesis which carry the significant weight.
On the other hand, LP (low pass) and NC (no credit), are grades taken
very seriously by the Graduate Office. Two LPs (cumulatively) or one NC
automatically places the student on probation and scrutiny from the
Dean's office means that there must be significant measurable positive
progress in the next term to return to good standing. Failure to
return to good standing jeopardizes your receipt of a stipend.

The department also uses a system of internal grades which
convey to the student a finer-grained assessment of the student's
progress towards the written certification exam; the numerical score is ideally
accompanied by comments from the instructor. These grades are
destroyed after the student advances to candidacy or leaves the
program.

Quals:
What do you do if

you think you won't be able to make a deadline (including extended
deadlines)?

you think you want to change your committee?

you're having trouble finding a
time before deadline that both committee members can be there?

you
fail part of a qual (both traditional and non-traditional ways that
people have been asked to finish their qual)?

What circumstances warrant an
extension? How does the GPC view missing a deadline?
How do qual deadline impact the
teaching seminar and advancing to candidacy?
What happens if you don't make the deadlines?

There is a completely new section on quals in the Information for
Graduate Students document which
answers all of these questions and more, available
here.

Travel Funding: What kinds of funds are
available for graduate students to attend conferences? How do I
request funding? What are examples of the kinds of things that have and
haven't received funding?

Conferences
are an integral part of every professional mathematician's career.
They are places to present your work to the community, gain a sense of
the vista in your own field, meet new colleagues whose work you have
seen online, and gain new perspectives or new insights on problems
that are part of your research program. As such they are most
appropriate when your own research program is underway, or at least
burgeoning, though there are notable exceptions.

For graduate students in their first and second year, there are often
workshops appropriate for those who are "still looking". As an
institutional member of MSRI, the department can often send two
graduate students for summer workshop spanning a week or two; see the
calendar tab at the MSRI web site. Other research institutes will offer
workshops and solicit applications for funding for graduate students.
Even small conferences will often have funding available to those who
apply early. As you advance in your graduate career, conferences
related to your research will become relevant. At the very least, you
should probably attend the AMS winter meetings in your fifth year
since you will be on the job market and many prospective employers
will be there. In your fourth or fifth year, it would be ideal to
give a talk at a research conference to begin to make yourself known
to other researchers in the field; perhaps a prospective letter writer
will be among your new acquaintances.

Assuming that your schedule permits you to attend (e.g., classes,
tutorials, teaching responsibilities), you can go to virtually any
conference you like. Getting funding is of course the trick.
You should solicit financial support in the following order:

Request funding from the conference itself: often a conference
will have some external funding, in many cases directed specifically
at graduate students and/or junior faculty. You should apply for it.
In fact you have little chance of getting funding from Dartmouth
unless you can document your failure to receive external funding.
Often this funding provides for travel expenses, sometimes hotel,
generally not food.

If you are giving a talk at a conference (always a good idea), you
can receive a one-time allotment of $500 from the graduate office.

Depending on how department resources look, graduate students can
often request funding from the department itself through the Graduate
Representative. This is always after all other sources of support
have been exhausted. The information sheet for Academic year 08 - 09
is here, and an
updated version is usually emailed to all graduate students once per
year.
If you are presenting a paper at a conference (and meet the other
departmental criteria), you can reasonably expect to receive support
for one conference per year from the department. If you are just an
attendee, your priority is a good deal lower, and funding will be
highly dependent on the availability of resources.

There may also be a new bit of funding available from the College
Graduate Student Council, but this will be available only after all
the above sources of money have been exhausted. We have at least one
graduate student representative to the council, so ask around for who
it is to get more information.

Teaching Seminar: What is the teaching seminar?
What are my responsibilities within it? What are my responsibilities
in addition to it? Does passing the seminar mean I am in charge of my
own courses?

Assuming a student successfully advances to candidacy at the end of
their second year of graduate study, they are eligible (and required)
to take the teaching seminar. Formally they register for both 147 and
148, and a third course (156 or 157) as appropriate. In recent
offerings, the seminar has been condensed to an intensive course
lasting six out of the ten weeks of summer term. While the teaching
seminar will keep you quite busy, most advisors (you will have a
thesis advisor before advancing to candidacy) will still expect some
degree of interaction with you during this period.

The teaching seminar is a highly visible centerpiece to our
graduate program which distinguishes our program from the vast
majority. It is taken seriously by the department, and hopefully by
you as well. As with many things in life, its value will increase as
you begin to teach courses on your own and grapple with the dynamics
in the classroom while trying to optimize the classroom experience for
all.

You will have two teaching opportunities as part of the graduate
program, one in each of your third and fourth years, and a flexible
fifth-year teaching experience described below. As with all temporary
and junior faculty in the department, you will have a course
supervisor for each course you teach, with whom you must discuss and
obtain agreement on your choice of textbook, syllabus, and grading
scheme. In addition, you must show your course supervisor drafts of
all exams (prior to them being given), and consult with him or her
about the assignment and distribution of final grades. Hopefully you
will also take advantage of your supervisor's experience to engage in
broader discussions should unexpected issues arise in the class.
Beyond the formal oversight by the course supervisor, you will also
have a teaching mentor whose job is to advise and assist you as an
instructor regarding both teaching and development as a teacher. For
students teaching their first course, the teaching mentor will at a
minimum review the first week's worth of lesson plans and visit at
least three classes throughout the term. Classroom visits will be
preceded by a review and discussion of the objectives and lesson plan
for the day and followed by a discussion of how the class went. The
teaching mentor may also (if they and the course supervisor wish)
replace the course supervisor in reviewing drafts of syllabi, exams
and so forth. You should also make a point to ask the Teaching
Evaluation Committee to visit your class (optimally in the second
week), both for feedback for you, and to write a formal review which
can be used for part of a teaching letter when you apply for jobs.

Seminars: What seminars exist in the department?
Should you attend them if you haven't picked a research area yet? How do you
find out about seminar talks? What about colloquia? What's the point
of going to talks if you get lost all the time?

There are numerous seminars in the department supplemented by weekly
colloquia and special lectures series at various times in the year.
The obvious starting point for learning about them is the activities link
on the department web page. There you will see links to the
aforementioned items.

All graduate students should attend the graduate student seminar.
This seminar consists of talks by graduate students for graduate
students; faculty are not in attendance. Oh, there is also free food.

You should get in the habit of attending colloquia. When you are a
newbie, sit in the back and bring something to work on for when you
get lost. Sometimes you will get lost in the first ten seconds,
sometimes the first ten minutes, sometimes not at all. As you learn
more, it will (usually) take a longer time to get lost.

What's the point of coming if you get lost all the time? A very good
question with at least three answers. The first is that mathematics
is about making connections, and really interesting mathematics comes
from making connections among ideas that appear quite disparate.
All of a sudden in a colloquium (which are supposed to be aimed at a
"general" audience) you find the speaker talking about something which
you have seen in a very different context. Following that connection
can often lead to an interesting research problem. Second, you will be
giving many talks in your life (seminar talks, thesis defense, job
interview talks), and attending colloquia allows you to form strong
opinions about what constitutes a good or bad talk including what
styles and approaches are most effective. And last, but
not least, is that these speakers have been invited by someone in the
department to speak to us. Common courtesy suggests the hosts
show up! A good turn out reflects well on how the department is
viewed by the outside which can have all manner of positive effects.

The schedule of colloquia is available on the department's web site
under the activities link. If an upcoming talk looks particularly
interesting you can ask the colloquium chair who invited the speaker,
and then perhaps ask to meet with the speaker or ask to be considered
to go out to dinner with the speaker.

Research seminars are often more specialized, but equally often
will have periods in which talks are given which are intended to
introduce a more general audience to aspects of the field. Usually
the web pages for these seminars (see the activities link) gives
information about the subject. Find out who the speaker is and see if
they think you will understand. If you are not sure on what area you
would like to work in, a seminar can be an excellent vehicle to
observe not only the types of problems people in the department like
to work on, but also the personalities of prospective advisors.

Often at the beginning of each term, emails will be sent to the
entire department asking if you want to be on a mailing list for
announcements and giving organizational information. The mailing
lists are low volume and usually contain an abstract of the upcoming talk.

Being away from the department: for a day, a
week, a month, or forever -- when does going on vacation count as a
leave of absence? What do you do if you're a first or second year,
and your potential advisor tells you you should go to a conference,
but the professor teaching your course says you shouldn't? If you
don't get GPC approval before leaving to do something math-related,
what happens? What's department policy on leaving campus during
Dartmouth breaks?

Well this is a broad spectrum of questions! To begin, graduate
students in this program are supported 12 months out of the year,
whether it be (partially) through a grant or entirely from a Dartmouth
Fellowship. The official policy from the Associate Dean of the
Sciences is that aside from College holidays (e.g., Christmas, New
Years, Fourth of July, etc), students on twelve-month contracts
receive a total of four weeks of vacation, that is twice as much as
you would get starting a job in the "real" world. For example, if you
take one week off between each term, that constitutes your four weeks
of vacation. The rest of the time is "on the clock".

Certain activities are generally construed not to count as
vacation, e.g., attending a week-long conference, though attendance
presupposes that there are no conflicts with ongoing obligations. The
scenario of a conflict between a potential, future advisor telling
you that you should go to a conference and your course instructor
saying you should not is probably a bit distorted. One could easily
see a potential advisor suggesting it might be useful for you to go to
a conference, but realistically if you are still taking qual courses,
you probably lack the background to get a great deal out of the
conference, and you need to absorb the material in your course(s) to
pass your quals. In the event of real conflict, the student should
take themselves out of the discussion and let the two faculty members
work it out. Perhaps there is some extraordinary reason the student
should attend that the other faculty member would acknowledge
supersedes the need for your presence in his or her course. Unlikely,
but possible; let them work it out.

If you leave campus for an extended period without consent of the
GPC, you are in breach of contract, and can have your stipend
suspended. The reason for your absence is of little consequence if it
has not been officially approved. Obviously leaving for an emergency
would of course be approved. But the bottom line is that you are paid
to be here; if you are not here, you don't get paid. For perspective,
faculty are paid a nine-month salary and so have a commitment to be on
campus for only nine months out of the year. While many faculty remain on
campus for much of the year, there is no contractual obligation (and
no matching financial compensation afforded them) to do so.

Also, just as a faculty member on sabbatical cannot be paid by another
institution, a graduate student on stipend cannot receive salary which
supplements his or her income.

How much trouble am I in?:
If you're not on probation, do you automatically count as a student in
good standing?

The normal status of a graduate student is to be in good standing,
meaning you are currently meeting all deadlines and satisfactorily
completing all requirements of the program. To not be in good
standing represents a broad spectrum of noncompliance with a
correspondingly broad set of responses, some of which are internal to
the department and some of which come to the attention of the graduate
office.

Doing poorly in your courses quickly comes to the attention of the
graduate office and can immediately place you in a position in which
your stipend is in jeopardy. For example, if a student fails a course
or (cumulatively) receives two low passes in previous terms, the
graduate office automatically places the student on probation. As a
consequence, the department must be able to provide concrete evidence
that the student has made significant progress towards remediating
these deficiencies. Failure to do so could easily result in a
suspension of stipend and conditions and deadlines issued to avoid
separation from the program.

A student who gets a low pass in one course will probably get a letter
of concern from the graduate office, and one from the GPC. The letter
will require a response: what went wrong? how will you recover?, etc.
If this is the first such stumble, probably no further action will be
taken. If the spiral continues downward (e.g., now a missed qual
deadline in addition to a LP), concern is growing and the student is
now changing status to not be in good standing. The GPC will no doubt
issue a letter expressing increased concern and ask for more detailed
input for how and when you will get back on track and perhaps for a note of
support from a faculty member with whom you are working to remedy your
deficiencies. Further downward spiral suggests you are reaching a
point from which recovery is becoming problematic. At this point,
deadlines may be imposed by the GPC and failure to meet those
deadlines will result in a suspension of stipend. If a stipend is
suspended, no doubt one last set of deadlines will be imposed after
which you would be separated from the program.

The GPC and the department in general are here to help you stay in good
standing. Talking to the GPC when any difficulty arises is a good
idea. As you can see from above, it takes several steps to be
separated from the program, but if you get caught in a downward spiral,
things tend to happen quickly.

Outside Funding and Tutoring:
Can I receive outside funding? Can I get a tutoring job? Can I get
paid by a summer workshop or REU?

Financial support for graduate students comes from Dartmouth
Fellowships, faculty research grants, departmental grants (e.g.,
GAANN), and from grants and scholarships obtained by students
themselves (e.g., NSF graduate fellowship). Students are encouraged
to apply for any external fellowship for which they may be eligible.
Outside fellowships sometimes pay more than Dartmouth Fellowships, and
it is certainly something notable to put on your vita. In addition,
outside fellowships supplement the limited pool of internal resources,
allowing more flexibility in the size of our graduate program.

In terms of graduate students receiving salary in addition to their
stipend, we quote from the Graduate Student Handbook downloadable from
the Graduate Offices
Academic
Services and Policies page. The relevant quotation is:

Graduate students who are fully supported (a full
tuition scholarship and a full stipend) cannot receive additional
payment from Dartmouth College for services rendered and cannot accept
employment outside the College while enrolled. Exceptions may be
granted in cases of unique academic or professional benefit or
documented financial hardship. Any exception will normally not exceed
eight hours per week and must have the written approval of the
graduate student's advisor, department chair or Graduate Program
Committee, and the Dean of Graduate Studies.

All graduate students are strongly encouraged to read the (58 page)
document written by a former graduate student (Ph.D. 2002) who posed
precisely this question:
See Mark
Tomforde's guide which offers a great deal of insight into the
entire process of choosing an advisor, successfully writing your
thesis, and thoughts for how to sustain a research program.

Choosing an Advisor:
What are good strategies for finding an advisor (and secondary advisor)?

The choice of a secondary advisor is less critical than that of the
advisor. Each year you and your primary and secondary advisor sit
down and discuss your progress. Typically you have provided a written
summary of where you think you are in the thesis process in advance of
the meeting. You all discuss this document, then the advisor
discusses where he or she thinks you are. The secondary advisor
freely asks questions of both the student and primary advisor. The
goal is for the advisor to produce a document which gives a reasonable
assessment of where you are and which (hopefully) makes a case for
your continued financial support. Stipends are renewed annually based
on continued good progress, but need not be otherwise.

In rare cases where there may be some disagreement between student
and advisor, the secondary advisor acts as a mediator.

Choosing an advisor in another department or from another
institution is very complicated and case sensitive. No general advice
is offered here. Talk to the GPC, graduate advisor, graduate
representative or department chair as a starting point.

Advancing to Candidacy: What forms? Where do you get
the forms? To whom do you turn them? What do you do if you don't have
enough thesis passes?

Presuming you have passed four quals with at least
two thesis-ready passes, you need only obtain an advisor and
secondary advisor, and you have already read advice on how to do that
above. All that's left is to get the advisor form from Amy and
have your advisor and secondary advisor sign it, which says they are
aware of their roles. Then turn it back to Amy and the GPC will
review things from there.

If you reach the end of your second year and have not secured two
thesis ready passes, you are in a sticky spot. If you get to this
point not aware there was a problem, do not expect sympathy to abound.
Presumably you have petitioned the GPC for some sort of extension
which may or may not have been granted. The mechanism for securing
thesis ready passes in subjects is up to the original qual committee
from whom you presumably received a Ph.D pass. In the absence of an
extension from the GPC, you would (presuming you completed all other
requirements) receive your M.A. and be separated from the program.

Having Trouble with a Thesis Advisor::
What do you do if you're having a problem with your thesis advisor?
What do you do if you want to change thesis advisors?
What's the department policy on
interdisciplinary work and thesis advisors outside the math department?
What about thesis advisors at other schools?

A student-advisor relationship is always an important
one, and can sometimes be a difficult one, which is why one of the
criteria you hopefully applied in choosing your advisor was the
ability to communicate easily with him or her. Often tensions arise
between student and advisor because of differences in expectations.
The advisor believes you should be capable of X, while you are
thinking along the lines of X/log X as being great. Perhaps you don't
understand what your advisor wants. Perhaps your advisor doesn't
understand why you can't push through.The first course of action is to talk; try to explain that you
perceive some tension and try to explore expectations together. If
you still feel you are getting nowhere, engage your secondary advisor
for counsel. Maybe he or she can more easily see both sides of the
issue and act as an intermediary. There are also formal grievance
processes described in the College's Graduate Student
Handbook.

You think you want to change advisors? This is clearly a major
step and it is strongly recommended you consult your advisor,
secondary advisor and other faculty whose opinion or insight you
value. Other graduate students probably do not have the life
experience to advise you accurately, so you should weigh the advice
you get accordingly. The underlying issues may be broad. For
example, maybe you hate the problem you are working on, but are
content with the general area. Your advisor may be happy/able to get
you started in a new direction. Maybe you hate the field in general
and want to make a large-scale change. Changing advisors generally
means that significant retooling will be required, and you are going
to lose not only the time up to this point, but the additional time to
retool before you can make forward progress again. Compounding this,
you have at most five years of funding from Dartmouth. So if you can
do anything to avoid changing advisors, do so, or at least do so early
in the game. All this amplifies the importance of trying to make a
good decision in the first place.

The current
policy on language exams is that they should be passed by the end of
the winter term of your fourth year. Admittedly, this deadline is not
as rigidly enforced as qual deadlines, but allowing this requirement
to lapse into your fifth year is foolish and could well end up being
the sole issue separating your from your degree. And yes, I have seen
people fail a language exam after they have defended their thesis.

The intent of the language requirement is to be able to read source
materials in your research field while you are actively working on
your thesis problem. There will be plenty of time you are frustrated
with your thesis and want a break. Logoff of Facebook and learn some
verbs. Reading mathematics in a foreign language is just not that
hard, so do it!

Thesis Defense: What happens if you don't finish your
thesis on time or need to reschedule your thesis defense?

Something has happened which precludes you from defending your thesis
before the deadline in the spring. It happens from time to time.
We'll presume here that your results are in hand, but the thesis not
quite written or a committee member unable to make it before the
College's deadline.

You have to check the details with the graduate office, but you can
maintain your status as a students (no stipend of course), and defend
in the summer with your degree granted at the end of summer. You may
also be able to walk at graduation with your "class". Of course if
the results are not it hand, you may need to apply for a leave of
absence formally to give the time needed to complete the thesis.
College regulations come to bear in such an instance. For example,
the College Graduate Student Handbook says:

Candidates for the Master's degree must spend at least three terms
(one academic year) in residence at Dartmouth; for Ph.D. candidates
the requirement is six terms (two academic years). However, to prevent
unduly prolonged residence, it is expected that the requirements for
the Ph.D. degree will be completed no later than seven years after
initial enrollment, unless the student enters with a Masters Degree in
his or her field of proposed study, in which case the student is
expected to complete the doctorate in five years. Failure to complete
the work in the time periods specified or failure to meet the academic
standards of the student's graduate program shall necessitate
re-evaluation of the student's progress and may result in a notice of
termination.

Teaching: What are the policies on using other people's
problems or tests? What's the procedure if you're going to fail
someone? What do you do if you have problems with your evaluation by the
teaching committee? What happens if the department is unhappy with
your teaching?

The department's course web
pages are a tremendous source of teaching material. They often
include homework assignments, syllabi, practice or actual exams and so
on. Such materials are free for you to use (and web sites to steal)
with the caution that copies of homework or exam problems may exist in
fraternity or sorority files.

Asking what the procedure is if you're going to fail someone raises
all sorts of flags. In particular, your course supervisor has been
kept up-to-date on the situation and in reviewing grades for
submission agrees that the student should fail. The more pressing
issue is that you have created a paper trail warning the student of
their poor progress throughout the term, and alerted the appropriate
class dean much earlier in the term of the ongoing problem. Aside
from someone zeroing out the final exam, the expectation of a D or E
should not be a surprise to the student, their parents, the class dean
....

From another point of view, what if the department is unhappy with
your teaching? You will be visited by the teaching evaluation
committee for each course you teach here. Ideally they will visit
after three to five lectures have passed, enough time to develop some
rapport with your class and in sufficient time to suggest style
changes if problems are perceived. If you are not contacted about a
visit, contact the chair of the teaching evaluation committee. If you
don't have a list of committee members or the one online
is not current, ask Tracy or Amy.

Teaching is
part of the degree requirements and we hope to train you to be as good
a teacher as possible. Taking the teaching seminar will not make you
perfect and even if there were perfect teachers, they too would have
terrible days from time to time. The person from the teaching
evaluation committee is there to help you hone your skills. If there
are issues, they will be discussed, tactics planned, and your class
will be revisited to see how well they worked. The process repeats
until things are going smoothly.

Fifth Year Teaching Experience: How do I propose a
project and to whom? What are some possibilities for what to do?

In their fifth year, at the discretion of the Chair in consultation
with the GPC, students should expect to teach a course in the
department. They should know what their responsibilities will be by
the end of the spring term in their fourth year. Students teaching in
their fifth year need only register for Math 149 in the appropriate
term.

In unusual circumstances, a student may gain more benefit from an
alternative fifth-year teaching experience. In such a circumstance,
the student is required to petition the GPC for permission; this is
accomplished in two steps.

The petition consists of three documents submitted to the GPC in
the Spring term of their fourth year. First, the student submits a
one-page proposal detailing the proposed teaching experience, the
role of the faculty sponsor, and the student's role, including an
estimate of their time commitment. Generally, students are expected
to spend time comparable to the time necessary to teach their own
course. Second, the student submits a letter from the faculty
sponsor endorsing the proposal and indicating its pedagogical value
to the student. Third, the student submits a letter of support from
the student's thesis advisor. At this point, the GPC approves (or
denies) the project, giving the student advice on how to improve and
revise the proposal. If the proposal is denied, the student will
most likely teach a course in the next year.

Subsequently, at least two weeks before the end of the term preceding
the term in which the teaching experience is to take place, or the
beginning of the Winter term of the fifth year (whichever is sooner),
the student submits a detailed revision of the proposal to the GPC.
The revision should address any concerns raised by the GPC and
highlight any evolution of the proposal since its initial approval.
This allows time for the GPC to review the proposal and ask for
modifications, if necessary.

Who's Who: What are the roles of the GPC,
the Graduate Student Representative, the Graduate Student Advisor,
Advisor to First Year Graduate Students, Head of the Graduate Program,
the Graduate Admissions Committee, Department Administrator,
Department Secretary, etc? What kinds of questions do each group or
person handle?

The Department
Documents page contains the Department Reference Guide, Course
Supervisor lists, and Committee Assignment lists. While the Reference
Guide needs some updating as to the division of responsibilities
between the Graduate Advisor and Graduate Representative, one still
gets a good idea of the scope and purpose of the various committees. The
committee lists tells you the members of various committees and the
course supervisor list tells you what you think it should.

Tea: How do I handle tea (getting the card, setting up,
cleaning up, turning in receipts), plus what to do if you forget or
lose the card?

One signs out the department credit
card by talking to Tracy or Amy. They will tell you the budget,
which differs for regular or high teas. If you lose the card, it is
really serious, so don't, but should it happen report its loss
immediately to Tracy, Stephaine, or if neither of them is available, to
the department chair.

A tradition seems to have developed in which the first-year
graduate students are responsible for buying items for tea, for
setting up, and cleaning up. This is entirely a graduate student
affair. Tea is from 3:30 - 4pm daily, so should be set up by 3:30 and
cleaned up promptly after tea ends. If you are going to a colloquium,
just remember to clean up after the talk. Take care of dirty dishes,
etc.